Undertanding Human Relations (Kinship Systems)
Laurent Dousset
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Dousset, Laurent 2011. « Undertanding Human Relations (Kinship Systems) », in N. Thieberger (ed.), The
Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Fieldwork. Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 209-234
The Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Fieldwork
Edited by Nick Thieberger
Oxford University Press
Laurent Dousset
EHESS (Advanced School for Social Studies)
CREDO (Centre de Recherche et de Documentation sur l’Océanie)
3 place Victor Hugo
F – 13003 Marseilles
[email protected]
Part four: Collaborating with other disciplines
Chapter 13 : Anthropology / Ethnography. Understanding human relations (kinship systems).
Kungkankatja, minalinkatja was the answer of an elderly man to my question, 'How come you call your cousins
as if they were your siblings?', when I expected to hear different words, one for sibling and one for cousin. This
episode occurred at a very early moment of my initial fieldwork in the Australian Western Desert; certainly early
enough to set the stage for some investigations into the complex nature of people’s own (emic) views of the idea
of human relationships, while considering them against the structure of universal (etic) typologies of the human
family. Kungkankatja, minalinkatja, literally 'from a woman, from a man', meant in the context of my question
that the children of a woman and those of her brother are to be considered identical. Although I shall not go into
the analytical details of this particular example (see Dousset 2003 & 2005), it will nevertheless provide us here
with some elementary guidelines for the conducting of linguistic investigations into the structure of those human
relationships anthropologists call kinship and social organisation. As we shall see later in this chapter, such short
phrases have the capacity to flatten out pieces of intertwined and complex semantics.
'Kinship and marriage are about the basic facts of life', Fox once wrote (1996 [1967]:27). 'They are about "birth,
and conception, and death", the eternal round that seemed to depress the poet but which excites, among others,
the anthropologist.' 'Kinship is a system of social relationships that are expressed in a biological idiom… It is
best visualised as a mass of networks of relatedness, not two of which are identical, that radiate from each
individual', as another scholar wrote (Tonkinson 1991:57). Kinship also appears as a 'huge field of social and
mental realities stretching between two poles. One is highly abstract: it concerns kinship terminologies and the
marriage principles or rules they implicitly contain or that are associated with them. The other is highly concrete:
it concerns individuals and their bodies, bodies marked by the position of the individual in kinship relations'
(Godelier 1998: 387).
While many anthropologists would agree today that there are no so-called kin-based societies (Godelier 2004,
Dousset 2007) — societies in which kinship provides the overarching ideological domain for social structure and
behaviour — they would also argue that in many, if not in most, societies it is an important vehicle of social
structure, behaviour and moral order. Be it landownership and its transmission, behavioural codes, role
distribution in ritual contexts, status attribution and its political and economic consequences etc., the domain of
kinship is often involved with considerable effects. The fact that in Euro-American systems of law children
usually inherit property from their father and mother is a matter of kinship. The analysis of the domain of human
relationships thus involves multiple and intertwined levels of social reality. From the human body to the social
and moral order, and from spheres of practice to the domain of the symbolic.
This chapter is limited to pointing out a few central concepts and processes that are elementary in the
investigation of human kinship. It is strongly recommended that the reader consult some further readings that are
particularly useful, such as Carsten’s Cultures of Relatedness: New Approaches to the Study of Kinship (2000),
Schweitzer’s Dividends of Kinship (2000), or Stone’s New Directions in Anthropological Kinship (2001), for
contemporary discussions on the kinds of research interesting students of kinship nowadays. Above all, however,
I recommend Holy’s Anthropological Perspectives on Kinship (1996), which is the most comprehensive and
open-minded piece of work on the topic I have come across.
For the sake of organising data collection and analysis, it is useful to split the complexities of kinship into its
various constituents from which in-depth analysis can proceed. The chapter is thus divided into three parts. In the
first, we will discuss the concept of social organisation as distinct from but related to kinship itself. The next
part will introduce the reader to the constitutive domains of the study of kinship, which are called kinship
terminologies. The use of jargon has been kept to a minimum, but avoiding all of these special terms is neither
possible nor helpful. At the first use of each of these terms their meaning will be briefly explained. The last and
shortest part will include some avenues for tying kinship to other and more symbolic and bodily aspects of social
reality.
Social organisation and kinship: two distinct but complementary domains
The expression social organisation, as used by anthropologists, may produce some misunderstanding. It does not
cover all that is social and organised. The social universe is indeed organised, since reactions to individual
behaviour would otherwise be unpredictable and ‘living together’ difficult. What the expression social
organisation covers generally speaking are those elements that organise people into locally recognised groups,
categories or classes dividing the social body into more or less distinct entities.
One could have started describing social organisation by discussing the notion of the ‘family’. The family
however, as it is understood in its Euro-American meaning, is neither universal nor inevitable. Among the Na of
the Yongning region in China, to quote an extreme example, a mother lives with her brother, both raising the
children of the genitor (note that I avoid using the term ‘father’ here) who himself lives with his own sister.
Children most often don’t even seem to know who their actual genitor is (Hua 2000).
Instead, the most classic and better-defined examples for the kinds of groups or categories that constitute a social
organisation are clans and lineages. The Baruya of the Papua New-Guinea highlands, counting over 2000 people
living in 17 villages, for example, are organised in 15 clans. One of these clans gave the name to the entire
society, the Baruya, which is also the name of an insect the Baruya clan members are not allowed to kill. The red
wings of this insect are associated to the ‘road of fire’ the apical ancestor of the clan took in mythical times when
he was sent by the sun down to earth to unite people and to establish the clan. Similar myths exist for each clan
whose members recognise a link of kinship to their apical ancestor and each such clan is divided into several
‘brother lineages’ that refer to the same ancestral origins. Since members of one and the same clan share the
same ancestor, it is considered incestuous to marry a spouse from within the clan. The clans of the Baruya
society are thus linked to each other through ties of marriage (Godelier 1982, 2004).
A society, tribe or ethnic group may be divided into a number of groups that are called clans if their epical
ancestor is mythical, or lineages if genealogical memory traces ancestry back to one single human being. In
many cases, as with the Baruya, the clan with its mythical ancestor is itself divided into several lineages each
with their human ancestor. These human ancestors themselves, however, link back to one and the same mythical
ancestor. They are brother or sister lineages.
Importantly, membership of these clans or lineages is not determined by ambiguous criteria. It is not a bridge
club that you can join or leave as you wish. Membership is determined by explicit rules that belong to the realm
of kinship. We may talk of patrilineal clans or lineages if membership is defined through the male line, as is the
case with the Baruya. In this case, a father, his sons, his sons’ sons etc. belong to the same clan or lineage. A
man’s daughter belongs to this clan as well, but since she will marry a man from another clan, her children will
follow her husband’s line of membership.
Less frequent are so-called matrilineal clans or lineages. In this case, membership follows the female line. A
well-known example are the Navajo of North America who think of kinship in terms of k’é. ‘My relatives’, or
shik’éi, are the particular ones with whom one shares intense enduring relationships, they are relatives through
what is called clans. Birth affiliates a child with her or his mother and the mother’s clan, those who came out of
the same womb. Birth and clanship are located in space, and clan names derived most likely from place names.
While Navajo clans do not hold property in common, members often visit and help each other. ‘K’é and clan
relationships are the primary way in which the Navajo people locate themselves in the social
universe’(Lamphere 2001:39).
Summarising, we can say that a clan or lineage claims a common mythical or historical ancestor, and usually
recognises some shared substance, shared memory or any other shared background which is used to justify the
social body as a corporation. Landownership, residential composition, conflict and its resolution, roles in ritual
and so on are in may cases articulated around membership of such categories and around the opposition or
distinction of various such categories within a society or ethnic group.
These groupings (clans or lineages) abide by rules that organise their internal structure and establish the
relationships between all the clans of a society (usually marriage rules, as we shall see). Additionally, these clans
may be organised around local typologies and representations that need to be understood in order to understand
the social structure. The Maisin of Papua New Guinea, studied by Barker (e.g. 2005), know two types of clans,
Kawo and Sabu. They stand in an asymmetrical relationship to each other since the former host so-called Great
Men, who are leaders and have the role of taking responsibility in other clans, and the latter do not have such
Great Men and so are expected to listen to the advice formulated by the former. In other cases, such as in many
Australian Aboriginal or lowland Amazonian groups, clans stand in a more symmetrical relationship to each
other. They all claim some shared relationship to history, language and land and thus constitute together a larger
unity (a society, tribe or ethnic group), but each clan also claims to be descended from one particular ancestral
being, has the responsibility for particular sites or stretches of land and, in some cases, addresses the others using
particular speech etiquettes that mark clan distinction. All clans, on the other hand, are related to each other
through the exchange of human beings since women and men of one clan will marry women and men of other
clans. They are linked through the responsibility of performing the necessary ceremonies that will reproduce the
shared cosmic and social order, through the exchange of goods and, sharing a common language, through the
exchange of words. Relationships between clans and lineages are relationships of distinctions between groups of
people and, at the same time, relationships of similitude and exchange, unifying these distinctions within a
global social entity such as the ethnic group, the tribe or the society. The same is true for any other type of social
category system.
Indeed, while clan and lineages are widespread and important types of social groupings, they are only two
among the many other types of categories that belong to the domain of social organisation. Some constitute
actual and visible corporations of people and families while others are limited to the domain of discourse and
representation but are nevertheless significant in structuring social space and practice. Importantly, these various
category-systems are not exclusive of one another, but are in many occasions piled on top of each other or
encapsulated, thus building up for every individual several layers of membership (or identity) and several
contexts of relational speech etiquettes. Patrimoieties or matrimoieties are other quite common category systems.
They divide society into two global entities that stand to each other in a relationship of distinction and exchange
as well. In a patrimoiety system, belonging to one or the other moiety is defined through patrifiliation (children
belong to their father’s group), while in a matrimoiety membership is defined through the female line. In certain
contexts, speakers may refer to their moiety, in others to their clan, and in yet others to their lineage, organised
around what is called a segmentary system as described for example by Evans-Pritchard (1940) for the Nuer or
by Riches (1978) for the Tiv. A moiety may encapsulate clans, which may encapsulate lineages. This system is
most visible in conflict situations. Imagine two patrimoieties, each composed of several clans and each clan
composed of several lineages. When two people within a lineage are in conflict, only immediate family members
may get involved in conflict resolution. However, when two people belonging to different lineages of the same
clan are in conflict, then all members of each lineage may get involved. When two members of lineages
belonging to different clans but to the same moiety are in conflict, then the entire clan may get involved. Even
further, if members of two clans belonging to different patrimoieties are in conflict, all members of the
patrimoieties may get involved in conflict resolution. In other words, social categories are mobilised with respect
to the difference or level of opposition they involve (level of the lineage, clan or moiety) in particular contexts
and calls for solidarity among their members. What looks quite obvious in conflict resolution points to the
existence of more confidential structural differences, such as variations and versions in the mythical narratives
between levels of social categories.
In Australia, for example, and where clan or moiety structures exist, each owns a portion of a shared mythical
narrative. These narratives, known as songlines belonging to the Dreamtime (the name given to the Australian
Aboriginal cosmology) depict the story of mythical figures that were travelling in mythical times over the
country, covering often enormous distances across clan and tribal territory, and sometimes even across language
groups. These figures shaped the landscape through their travels and are at the origin of natural species and
established social rules and laws. Singing the songs, telling the stories and performing the rituals that link back
to these mythical figures is crucial, but can only be undertaken by those people that are responsible for, not
necessarily the owner of, the stretch of land on which a particular episode of the mythical story occurred,
handing the responsibility over other episodes to neighbouring groups. In these cases, recording the mythical
narrative is only possible if the researcher has understood the clan or moiety structure of a society and is thus
able to identify the owners, and is thereafter able to reconstruct the songline in its entirety.
Moieties themselves may, as in some cases in Aboriginal Australia and lowland Amazonia (Dreyfus 1993), be
divided into social categories other than clans and lineages, such as sub-moieties, also called sections. These
sections may themselves again be divided into subsections. Sections and subsections divide moieties up in
different ways than clans do, but in some cases, such as among certain Northern Australian groups they may in
fact coexist. Sections and subsections reflect the distribution of genealogical relationships between people, in
some cases linked to ritual roles. The crucial difference between sections or subsections and clans or lineages is
that the former do not reflect visible corporate groups. They are rather abstract divisions of society into
nevertheless meaningful entities without people belonging to the same category actually living together, owning
land together or mobilising systems of conflict resolution. In Central Australia, subsection names are gendered,
and are used as terms of address and reference, and sometimes even as personal names. In English, a term of
address is ‘dad’ or ‘daddy’, while its term of reference is ‘father’. The Pintupi people, for example, use eight root
terms to group their people into eight categories, but add a gendered marker to distinguish female from male
members of subsections. For example, one of these subsections is kamarra; another one is paltjarri. As such,
however, these words are never used. People use Tjakamarra and Tjapaltjarri for males and Nakamarra and
Napaltjarri for females. These subsections stand in particular relationships to each other, so that Tjakamarra is
always the husband of a Napaltjarri woman and a Nakamarra is the wife of a Tjapaltjarri man.
Generational moieties, also called alternate generational levels, are yet another important type of social category
system. In many societies, these moieties or levels cut across other social groupings such as clans, lineages or
sections. In such generational moieties, a person’s co-generationals (siblings, cousins etc.), his or her
grandparents’ co-generationals and his or her grandchildren’s co-generationals are included in one moiety, while
a person’s parents’ co-generationals and his or her children’s co-generationals are members of the other moiety.
These generational moieties usually have considerable influence on everyday behaviour as well as on ritual
activities. People of the same generational moiety are usually behaviourally close and occupy similar roles
during ceremonies, while relationships between members of different generational moieties are rather those of
avoidance or at least respect. In the Australian Western Desert, these moieties have either relative names or
absolute names, and sometimes both. Among the Ngaatjatjarra peoples of the Western Desert, Ngumpaluru
(‘shadeside’) and Tjintultukultul (‘sundside’) are the absolute names of these moieties; and nganantarka (‘us
bone’) and tjanamiltyan (‘they flesh’) are the relative terms. A person is either Ngumpaluru or Tjintultukultul,
and he considers himself and his co-generationals as being nganantarka, while members of the opposite moiety
he refers to as tjanamiltyan. This person would show some restraint and even avoidance towards members of the
other moiety, while generally entertaining relaxed and close relationships with those of his own generational
moiety.
Let me sum up the general aspects of social organisation before moving on to the domain of kinship itself. Social
organisation describes the structure which divides a society into distinctive sociocentric and multilayered entities
that are at the basis of a multilayered definition of individual social membership. Sociocentric here means that,
with the exception of generational moieties, a social category is not the consequence of individual relationships
but exists irrespective of people’s situation. These entities constitute the sociological contexts of speech, of
shared responsibilities, of behavioural patterns and of ownership and sometimes residence. Depending on the
level of the entity people use as their context of speech, they may refer to one and the same person as a brother
or sister, as a cousin or as a rival or even as an enemy. It is common that a person refers to a cousin as a ‘brother’
when the context of speech is a discourse about clans, since he may conceive the person he refers to to be a
member of a ‘brother-lineage’.
Membership of these entities is defined by rules of descent, that is inheritance through generations following
particular rules. These rules, as we shall see, are the foundation of the relationship of distinction between social
categories. Bonding these social categories back into a global social unity is generally defined in terms of
exchanges, in particular marriage, as will be seen. Both descent and marriage may be considered to belong to the
domain of kinship, even though some authors argue that it rather reflects social organisation. These discussions
are irrelevant in the context of this chapter.
While social organisation describes the structure of general social distinctions and is sociocentric, kinship is of
the realm of the relationships between particular individuals and is thus egocentric. Kinship and social
organisation must be distinguished as fields of investigation since they concern separately observable social
realities. However, in most cases, the rules that organise egocentric relationships are de facto constitutive of the
more general entities which are the categories of social organisation. The remaining part of this chapter will
discuss kinship rather than social organisation, but let us keep in mind the relationship that exists between the
individual aspects of belonging to a group of people through the links of kinship and membership of a social
group through the principles of inheritance or descent.
During fieldwork the researcher should pay particular attention to the following issues with regard to social
organisation:
1) Societies are often divided into social groups who own different and complementary aspects of
mythological narratives, for example. It is important to understand what these social groups are and how
they relate to each other in order to be able to record complete narratives.
2) Social organisation constitutes contexts of speech that may change the semantic value of words, for
example calling a cousin ‘brother’ or an aunt ‘mother’ if the person is member of a particular social
category.
3) The names of these social categories are often significant and etymological work on these names needs
to be undertaken, as the Baruya case illustrates. They may be place names, names of species, of mythical
figures etc., or they may be gendered (as the Australian case illustrates), or include aspects of relatedness,
such as with the Navajo.
4) Sometimes these social categories and their names are important for reconstructing the local history.
Historical linguistics is relevant here. Names of social categories can often be reconstructed to their protoforms in a regional scope and provide some perspectives on diffusion, migration and loan. For example,
the central Australian subsection name Tjakamarra can be traced back to the section name Karimarra
used by other groups hundreds of kilometres to the west.
The basics of kinship
Investigation into kinship again means distinguishing different fields of interconnected social realities. These
may be summed up as follows: terminological systems; systems of descent and filiation (as already seen);
marriage rules; and a connected domain, discussions on shared and transmitted bodily substances. I will discuss
each of these individually since they also reflect the evolution of anthropological investigations into the domain
of kinship itself. It is however crucial to understand that the separation of these domains is an epistemological
artefact and that in social interaction all four play combined roles. Let me start by investigating terminological
systems – usually also the first step that the researcher in the domain of kinship studies undertakes in the field.
As we have seen in the introduction to this chapter, kinship is a mass of networks of relatedness which radiate
from each individual, and this network expresses itself in a biological idiom (Tonkinson 1991). The biological
idiom we are talking about is a set of words or expressions — kinship terms — that are largely attributed through
what Fox (1996) called the basic facts of life: conception and birth. What is meant here is that whatever the local
term that stands for 'mother' may be and whatever other relationships or things may be expressed by this term, at
its very basis it describes the unique relationship between a person and a woman from whose womb he or she
was born. Every language and, in some cases, even every dialect has its own set of such words that distribute the
network of relationships around the individual we take as our starting point (called Ego): mother, father, uncle,
brother, sister, cousin and so on. However, the structure of this network or terminological map (the list of
categories) is culturally ascribed and unique while also following a few universal rules. Categories of people,
sometimes also called classes, mean here all possible genealogical positions around Ego. For example, in
English, the word 'uncle' designates in fact four categories and not just one: one’s mother’s brother, one’s
father’s brother, one’s mother’s sister’s husband and one’s father’s sister’s husband. In other languages and
cultures, this may be very different. The terminological map — the list of categories that are locally
distinguished — constitutes a terminological system. The number of such basic terminological systems invented
by human societies is limited. Indeed, identical or very similar such terminological systems are found in societies
as far apart as lowland Amazonia, India, China, Australia or North America; others are of the same type as
among the Inuit peoples of Northern Canada and the European continent. The existence of a limited number of
types of terminological systems makes some prediction possible, though this always needs to be carefully
confirmed. It is because of the (incorrect) prediction I made that the sentence Kungkankatja, minalinkatja
became relevant: they were calling each other brother and sister where, because of some systemic rules derived
from these universal terminological systems, I was expecting a term for cousin. Let me now move on to those
universal rules and systems.
Kinship terminologies
Terminological systems were the first elements of kinship systems to attract anthropologists’ attention, starting
with Lewis Morgan’s Systems of affinity and consanguinity of the human family (1871) as one of the major
starting blocks for a new discipline. Morgan, who collected terminological systems through corresponding with
people from different parts of the world, concluded that despite the diversity in the ways cultures and languages
describe a person’s genealogical environment, there are important structural similarities that seem to be
systemic. He produced a first typology that has since been amended many times by various anthropologists, for
example Murdock (1949), but that remains widely in use today. What this typology does is present a few basic
ways — today one would say algorithms — of mapping the genealogical grid into classes and terms. Nowadays,
anthropologists distinguish five such basic systems they call — unsatisfactorily but explicably from a historical
point of view — by the names of the groups in which these systems are supposed to be found: Dravidian,
Iroquois, Hawaiian, Sudanese and Eskimo, with some further subtypes such as Crow, Omaha, Aluridja etc. I
shall now, in a very summary way, present each of these systems’ particular features.
The Dravidian is a very widespread system. It is found on all continents and among the most diverse cultures,
even though it is usually associated with small-scale societies. The main feature of this system is what is called
bifurcate merging. Bifurcate merging means that categories are bifurcated one generation above Ego (his or her
parent’s generation) according to gender, but their children are merged again in Ego’s generation. What may
here sound complex is in fact a very straightforward procedure of distinguishing fathers, mothers, uncles and
aunts following a different principle from that we find in Euro-American terminologies. Ego (the speaker)
distinguishes the ‘father’ from the ‘mother’ for which one uses two distinct terms. The father’s brother, however,
since he is of the same gender as the father, is called 'father' as well. The mother’s sister, since she is of the same
gender as the mother, is called 'mother'. The father’s sister, on the other hand, since she is of a different gender
from the speaker’s father, is called 'aunt' (or FZ, father’s sister). Similarly, the mother’s brother, since he is of a
different gender from the speaker’s mother, is called 'uncle' (or MB, mother’s brother). In other words, only the
mother’s brother is an 'uncle' and only the father’s sister is an 'aunt' if we use the English words. This is the basic
feature from which all other features are derived in so-called Dravidian systems.
Dravidian terminologies are usually extended in such a way that every person with whom one has a relationship
of any kind needs to be addressed or referred to by a kinship term. This extension to people other than close
genealogical relations follows a very precise algorithm, always according to the principle of bifurcate merging
mentioned above. My mother’s mother’s sister is a mother’s mother, but my father’s father’s sister is of a
distinct class.
The number of classes available to designate all the people in a group, tribe etc. is obviously limited. For
example, in Ego’s parents’ generation, there are usually only four terms available ('mother', 'father', 'father’s
sister' and 'mother’s brother'), which means that each individual knows many people he or she calls 'mother',
'father' etc. Since your 'mothers' marry people you call 'father', fathers’ sisters (FZ) obviously marry mothers’
brothers (MB). And since all children of people you call 'mother' or 'father' are obviously your siblings, all
children of people you call FZ or MB must be called differently, 'cousins' or, as anthropologists say in this case,
cross-cousins. The terms for siblings and for cross-cousins are, in a Dravidian system, all that are available to
name people of the same generation as yourself. Since one needs to marry someone of the same generation, and
since everyone needs to be positioned in a kin-category, and since you cannot marry a sibling for reasons of
incest prohibition (see below), all you have left as partners are obviously people from the cross-cousin category,
that is, children of people you call ‘uncle’ and ‘aunt’. Once you understand these principles, you can easily
extend them to any other person of the society. If I call someone cross-cousin and this person calls someone else
cross-cousin as well, I know that this other person is a sibling of mine: the cross-cousin of a cross-cousin is a
sibling, while the cross-cousin of a sibling is a cross-cousin. In other words, Dravidian systems distinguish
members of a group, tribe, or society as constituting two egocentric entities: first those that are affines,
comprising all the people who are potentially or actually in-laws (MB, FZ, cross-cousins etc.) and the rest,
whom we may called consanguines. Figure 1 displays a Dravidian system using, for pedagogic reasons, the
English terminology. Of course, one needs to replace these words with those used in local languages and
dialects.
[ Insert Figure 1 ]
[caption] Figure 1: A Dravidian system filled with English kin terms. Only very close kin are given in this
figure, but it must be remembered that Dravidian terminologies are extended. Triangles stand for males, circles
for females. Vertical lines stand for filiation/descent, horizontal lines for siblingship. The line uniting Ego’s
parents below their figure means they are married. The usual abbreviations used are B (brother), Z (sister), F
(father), M (mother), D (daughter), S (son), H (husband) and W (wife). All other kin categories are combinations
of these elements. For example, MB (mother’s brother) is a matrilateral 'uncle'; his daughter, MBD (mother’s
brother’s daughter), is a matrilateral cross-cousin. Additional abbreviations used by anthropologists are 'y' for
younger, such as in yB (younger brother), 'e' for elder, 'm' for a male speaker and 'f' for a female speaker. Older
ethnographies often write 'm.s.' for male speaking and 'f.s.' for female speaking.
The Iroquois system is a variation of the Dravidian-type terminology. While the Dravidian system is a universal
system in the sense that the rules of bifurcation and merging operate in the same way in each generation and at
each genealogical distance, and thus allow people to know how they stand to each other without even knowing
their actual genealogical relationship (see Dousset 2008), the Iroquois systems limits the automatic extension to
close kin only. Again it is not possible here to go into the details of this system and I refer the reader to Godelier
et al. (1998). Let us simply underline the fact that in a Dravidian system cross-cousins of cross-cousins are
brothers and sisters for Ego, while in an Iroquois system they remain cross-cousins.
The Hawaiian system, also called the generational system, is in some respects the simplest since it distinguishes
very few categories. In Ego’s parents’ generation, all women are called ‘mother’, and all men are called ‘father’.
Consequently, all co-generationals, that is all the children of people called 'mother' or 'father', are brothers and
sisters. It is important to note that Hawaiian systems can again be subdivided into two sub-systems, largely
because of the universal rule of incest prohibition between brothers and sisters. Because in a Hawaiian system
Ego only finds brothers and sisters among co-generationals, and because of this incest prohibition rule, possible
spouses for Ego need to be distinguished otherwise than by terminology alone. There are two solutions. The first
is to limit the use of terminology to very close kin and to apply a strict rule of exogamy (the necessity to marry
out into genealogically or spatially distant families). The other solution, when the terminology is used even
among genealogically distant kin, is to differentiate the categories of cross-cousins and of siblings as in a
Dravidian system, even though before marriage they are all called using the sibling terminology. In the latter
solution, the terminology is of the Hawaiian type but marriage rules follow the Dravidian type where crosscousins are potentially also spouses. The distinction between pre-marriage terminology and post-marriage
terminology is relevant here. I will return to this point.
The Sudanese system is the most descriptive system. Anthropologists, starting with Morgan, have distinguished
classificatory terminologies from descriptive terminologies. Classificatory terminologies denominate with one
term several categories or classes of people (such as ‘uncle’ in the English terminology), while descriptive
systems have the characteristic of naming differently every category of kin. The term for cross-cousin in a
Dravidian system is typically a classificatory term, while that for MB is a descriptive term (see figure 1). In fact,
it is not possible to distinguish entire systems as being either descriptive or classificatory, since all have some
elements of description and some elements of classification. The Eskimo system (and the English terminology is
of this type) discussed below, for example, was long considered to be a descriptive system. In fact it has
classificatory terms since the word 'cousin', for example, actually covers four categories of people: matrilateral
cross-cousins (MBD/S), matrilateral parallel cousins (MZD/S), patrilateral cross-cousins (FZD/S) and
patrilateral parallel cousins (FBD/S). The Sudanese system, though, is one of the most descriptive systems, if not
a totally descriptive one. Every single kin category is named using a distinct term.
The Eskimo system is found in Europe and, as its name indicates, among the Inuit peoples. Marriage is between
genealogically unrelated people, meaning that there is no direct connection between consanguinal and affinal
terminology, at least before marriage. The complex distinction between consanguinity and affinity will need to
be discussed in more precise ways below. Another characteristic of the Eskimo system is that bifurcation does
not occur. 'Uncles' can be found on the father’s side as well as on the mother’s side.
Crow and Omaha are sometimes considered distinct systems. They are, however, more likely to be interpreted as
specific variations of the Dravidian system (see Kronenfeld 1991). The particularities of Crow and Omaha
systems is that they operate what is called skewing. In certain contexts, a matrilateral cross-cousin is called by
the same term as a FZ, and a patrilateral cross-cousins like a MB. In other words, two generations are skewed
into one and the same term.
The general system of terminology and its pragmatic usages (and adaptations) in a particular language or dialect
can only be determined if the researcher actually records kin terms and their contextualised usages. Besides
simply listening to conversations, there exist two basic methods for recording these terminologies. The first is
the genealogical method, the second the tabular method. In the genealogical method, the researcher prepares a
genealogical sheet (see figure 1 above) in which are drawn all possible categories starting from an Ego (the
speaker): his younger brother, his younger sister, his older brother, his older sister, his father, his mother, his
mother’s older sister, his mother’s younger sister, his mother’s older brother etc. The sheet needs to cover at least
five generations: Ego’s, his parents’, his parent’s parent’s, his children’s, and his children’s children’s. It is
however advised, if possible, to go beyond these five generations. The researcher then sits with an individual,
notes the name, the place and date/time of recording, as well as the gender, age, place of residence, social role
etc. of the speaker. It is also useful to write down who else is sitting around and listening, and perhaps
contributing to the conversation.
This needs to be undertaken separately with several people, establishing a representative sample covering
various characteristics of the speaker: age, gender, social position and role, residence, member of a social
category etc. At least four questions need to be asked of each such person for each of the individual categories
drawn on the genealogical sheet: 1) how do you call that person? 2) how to you refer to this person when you
talk to someone else? 3) how does this person call you? and 4) how does this person refer to you when talking to
another person? Questions 3 and 4 will record what are called the reciprocals. In English, if you are a male, the
reciprocal of ‘father’ is ‘son’, since this is how your father will call or refer to you.
In some cases it may be difficult to ask direct questions unless one already knows quite a good deal about the
society. In these cases, one needs to use artifices to ask the question. A useful indirect way for obtaining the
terms for each position is to work through the genealogical sheet, taking women as the pivotal point. You then
ask the following types of questions: what do you call the person from whose womb you came? What do you
call another person that came out of the same womb after you and that is a male (younger brother)? You then use
the ‘marriage’ link to get the affinal males: what do you call the man that married (or is living with) the person
of whose womb you came? And so on.
While the genealogical method is a necessary first step, it also has its limits since it tackles only more or less
close kin (those drawn on the genealogical sheet). To extend the analysis of the usage of terminology beyond
close kin, the tabular method can be applied. With the tabular method, you prepare one card for each person you
interview. Ideally you attach a photograph of the person to the card, since this will greatly enhance the
discussions with other people. These cards are numbered so that you can refer to a person through its number.
You then, showing the photographs, ask each person how he or she calls and refers to each other person. The
results need to be noted in a tabular way: number 5 calls number 93 ‘younger brother’, number 54 calls number
12 ‘father’, etc. You may at a later stage check the reciprocals, as well as elucidate what I call relational triangles
(2008). They will help to identify which system is at work or to identify situations in which the expected term is
not applied: if person A calls person B ‘brother’, and if person A calls person C ‘mother’, then person ‘B’ should
be calling person C ‘mother’ as well, to take the most simple example. If person B does not call person C
‘mother’, then you need to find out why and in which situations.
What do we need to remember from this all too brief overview of terminological systems? Here are a few
guidelines to help in the recording of terminologies, which is considered to be one of the first steps of inquiry
into human social organisation and kinship.
1) Recording the kinship terminology and trying to establish which type the researcher is confronted with
is one of the first steps. There are several complementary methods for achieving this. One is to use the
genealogical method, drawing genealogies and asking for every individual what he or she calls them, and
how they refer to them, making sure one works with consultants of both genders, of different ages, status
etc. The second method is the tabular method that allows you to go beyond close kin. Another important
method that follows from the two previous ones is contextual observation and recording of how people
call or refer to each other in various social situations (among the family, with other clan members, among
ritual comrades, etc.). In some cultures, however, people hardly use kinship terms in everyday interaction
and drawing genealogies is sometimes the only means to obtain the terminologies.
It should be noted that real-world systems are never as neat as the theoretical types described in this
chapter. Confronting real-world terminologies with ideal typical terminologies provides important
insights into local representations and strategies, as our example of minalinkatja, kungankatja
demonstrates. It is not sufficient to record all the words believed to belong to the realm of kinship. It is
necessary to record terms with respect to the categories they designate as mapped against a chart of
possible genealogical positions. It is also necessary to distinguish descriptive terms (those that designate
one category only) from those which are classificatory (designating several categories). For example,
there may be a general category for cross-cousins, but once marriage has occurred with such a crosscousin, his or her actual brother may be called differently. In the Western Desert, cross-cousins are called
watjirra (classificatory). The actual brother-in-law however, while still a watjirra, is also called marutju
(descriptive).
2) It is thus necessary to record and distinguish kinship terms used between people before marriage and
after marriage. The same category of people may be called differently once marriage is envisaged or has
occurred. For example, in the Australian Western Desert again, a mother’s brother is called kamuru, but
once he is envisaged as a real or potential father-in-law, he will be referred to as waputju (wife’s father,
initiator), since kamuru denotes a proximity that is not appropriate in the case of in-laws.
3) It is necessary to distinguish terms of reference from terms of address. 'Mum' is typically a term of
address, while 'mother' is a term of reference that only in certain contexts or certain languages is used as a
form of address as well. In English, if you address your mother as ‘mother’, it does imply a contextual
connotation that needs to be analysed (emotional distance, aristocracy, not taking the mother seriously,
astonishment and so on). Many languages have only one term for both reference and address.
Additionally, some languages have tri-relational terms (cf. Merlan and Heath 1982), for example two
people talking together about a third related person (I and my cousin talking about another third person),
or one person talking about a couple of people (myself talking about the couple formed by my
grandfather and father).
4) Social, geographical and discursive contexts of speech may have considerable influence on the terms
and categories designated. Depending on which social category interlocutors stand in with regard to each
other and on the social context in which they speak or refer to each other, they may use different terms or
use the same terms differently. In the Australian Western Desert, which has a variant of a Dravidian
system, for example, people may call each other 'brother' (kurta) and 'sister' (tjurtu) even though they are
cross-cousins when the context of speech is that of opposing generational moieties, such as during
funerals which are organised around generational role distribution. In other and more egocentric contexts,
however, these same people will call each other 'cross-cousins' (watjirra).
5) With the recording of kinship terms and the corresponding categories, there is also the need to record
the expected normative behaviour that accompanies the terms. In many languages, the term for 'motherin-law' is for reference only, since people are not allowed to talk to their mother-in-law. Anthropologists
usually distinguish several general types of such normative behaviour: the joking relationship (people are
close to each other and may even make sexual allusions or jokes), the avoidance relationship (people are
not allowed to talk to each other), the respect relationship (people are allowed to talk to each other but the
relationship is asymmetrical, that is, one gives orders, the other listens; one receives goods, the other
gives goods etc.) and the relationship of reciprocity (people have a symmetrical/equal type of relationship
but not as close as that of the joking relationship).
6) Terminologies, as was the case with the names used in social organisation, are important in the domain
of historical linguistics. Kinship terms are considered relatively stable, and reconstructing proto-words
and through these proto-systems (what was the terminological system in use by the ancestors of the
group?), may provide important information on the local and regional history. Kinship terminologies may
also be borrowed from neighbouring groups, revealing aspects of intercultural relationships.
Descent and filiation
While terminologies are among the most important elements researchers need to record in the domain of kinship
studies, they are not the only aspects concerning the network of relatedness based on a biological idiom. With
the emergence of the British structural-functionalist school at the beginning of the 20th century with scholars
such as Malinowski, Radcliffe-Brown, Fortes, Evans-Pritchard and others, research increasingly concentrated on
the relationship between kinship and political and economic systems. How people were recruited into corporate
groups and how these groups also become landowners or land users, for example, became an important aspect of
research. Anthropologists were particularly interested in the relationship between social organisation as
discussed above and kinship and it was during this period that the notions of lineage and clan received their most
comprehensive definitions and articulations. Early on, researchers recognised that these categories’ principal
mode of recruiting people was the control of descent and the transmission of membership and ownership from
one generation to the next. As with systems of terminologies, anthropologists have identified a certain number of
types of such modes of transmission which the researcher needs to understand before tackling their linguistic
aspects.
Three general types of descent systems have been identified: unilineal, non-unilineal and mixed systems. In the
field, the most visible type is the unilineal system. As the name indicates, unilineal systems trace the process of
corporation, inheritance and transmission through a single line: the father’s line or the mother’s line. In a
patrilineal descent system (the Baruya, for example), membership of a group is inherited through the male line.
Children belong to the same group as their father, but to a different group from their mother. In a matrilineal
descent system, the Navajo for example, membership of a group is inherited through the female line and children
belong to the same group as their mother, but to a different group from their father. In the latter system, the
matrilateral uncle (the mother’s brother) usually has a very important educational role for his sister’s children
and marriage bonds are usually quite weak. It should be evident by now that unilineal systems are those most
often found in clans and lineages and are often also associated with terminologies which distinguish a group of
consanguines (one’s own lineage) from a group of affines. But this needs to be meticulously investigated since it
is not usually as clear-cut as theory would like to have it.
Among the non-unilineal systems, the most representative is the cognatic descent system. Non-unilineal systems,
and in particular cognatic systems, are considered unable to sustain enduring corporate groups. Indeed, in a
cognatic descent system children belong indistinguishably to their mother’s group or family as well as to their
father’s group or family, or inherit rights and property indistinguishably from their father’s side and their
mother’s side. Hence the general principle of inheritance and transmission does not make it possible to create
enduring distinctions between descent groups, since at every generation families or groups are conflated in the
children’s generation. In practice, however, societies that have a cognatic descent system are able to constitute
enduring corporate groups through other mechanisms. In certain parts of Europe, where the cognatic system is
the rule, the norm of primogeniture also existed, according to which the first-born male would inherit
landownership and constitute, with his close and enlarged family (kindred), a land-based enduring group, he
himself transmitting landownership to his eldest son and so on. Younger brothers had to leave the family group
or work under the authority of the older brother without ever becoming an owner. Thus, while in theory and in
discourses children inherit goods and rights from both their parents’ side, in practice one side may be considered
central and the other peripheral, as we shall see below with the concept of complementary filiation and double
descent.
Among the mixed systems, the ambilineal one is probably the most difficult to identify but also very interesting
since it is open to political and economic contextualisation and strategies. In an ambilineal system, a person may
choose to follow the mother’s line or the father’s line, depending on opportunities or social pressure. But once he
or she has chosen to link up to one or the other side, it may not be changed later in life and it is expected one
stands by the group or family from which one claims inheritance. In the Australian Western Desert again, the
system at work is very similar to an ambilineal system but, unlike that in Polynesia where ambilineal groups
constitute more or less enduring corporations called ramages (Firth 1957), it has but little consequence in the
definition of landownership or membership of distinguishable units.
Another mixed system is double descent. People may trace their descent in different ways depending on what is
transmitted or different people may trace descent in different ways. Such is the case among the Mundugumor of
Papua New Guinea where girls and boys do not follow the same rule. Girls belong to their father’s group and
boys to their mother’s. In other societies, such as the Apinayé of Brazil, descent lines are gender specific: women
trace descent matrilineally, men patrilineally (see Holy 1996: 121ff for a discussion of double descent systems).
The systems at work in the real world are rarely as straightforward and easily identifiable as theory would like
them to be. Local descent ideologies are often combinations of different systems, just as was the case with
terminologies. More importantly, what we need to concentrate on is the substance of these local systems and the
answer to the complex question of what is transmitted or inherited, how is this done and expressed, and what
are the reasons (ideologies, representations, symbols…) accompanying it? Two complementary investigations
are necessary in this respect. Certain elements can be answered and analysed through observation, interviews and
discussions. Who has access to certain resources, on particular land, and not to others? Who constitutes a
residential group or a regional group and which people or families live close to each other or establish particular
networks? Who shares what, with whom and in what circumstances? Who systematically offers goods as
presents to whom and what is expected in return? Who looks after each other’s children? Which people join
together in conflict situations? What happens to a person’s body and belongings after death?
The second approach is a more in depth and systematic way of recording and analysing the semantics and
structure of discourse in which the fieldworker investigates in a semi-directive manner the symbols and
representations that constitute the local descent ideology. This investigation should ideally be simultaneous to
the recording of genealogies. I will return to this question in the next section but let me here underline that what
is at stake is presenting and analysing indigenous discourses about the constitution of human beings and their
environment. These discourses will often, if not always, invoke some principle of inheritance and transmission
as a justifying factor of existence in general and of the interlocutor’s existence in particular. Within this realm,
typical questions the fieldworker may ask are the following. What are the elements that constitute the human
body? Which substances of the body have which function or purpose? What is conception of a baby and how
does it happen? What happens to the human body once it is lifeless? What other than flesh and bones constitutes
the human being? How do these other elements penetrate the body? What does the individual share with siblings,
parents, neighbours etc.? How can one see and understand that a person belongs to such and such a group or
family? What substances are inherited from one generation to the other? And so on.
These questions may show that certain elements are transmitted through the male line, such as ownership of or
access to land, but that others have a different destiny. In many societies, a person’s blood, for example, is
thought to come from the mother alone and constitutes an element of the individual’s identity that diverges from
the patrilineal principle of landownership transmission. In such cases, it is useful to distinguish descent from
filiation. Descent describes the principles inherent in the transmission of material and immaterial things, rights
and duties, over generations. Filiation, on the other hand, is the principle which links a person to his or her
immediate parents only. On many occasions, filiation and descent produce similar effects, such as in our
example of the transmission of landownership through the patriline. In many other cases however there are
additional criteria that establish a relationship to a parent in a different way, without constituting a corporate
group, such as is the case with blood inherited from the mother in our example. Fortes (1959) has coined the
expression complementary filiation to describe these additional factors and mechanisms.
What do we need to remember from this again too brief overview of systems of descent and filiation? Here are a
few guidelines to help in the recording of data.
1) Any social, ethnic, tribal etc. group shares at least three things: a spatial location (even if it is a virtual
one as with internet communities), a way of identifying and recruiting its members, and a shared history
or memory. Terminologies, as we have seen, structure the social field within the group from an egocentric
(a speaker’s) point of view. They reflect certain aspects of organisation, role distribution and the
circulation of people. Descent and filiation, on the other hand, touch upon the three above-mentioned
conditions of social being. They answer questions on how spatial organisation is reproduced over
generations. They answer questions on how people become and are members of the group and its
subgroups, and they are associated to the group’s collective history and memory. Very often, patrilineal
descent is linked to the existence of clans who each have their own myth of origins.
2) Some aspects of descent and filiation are visible and straightforward; others are hidden, unconscious,
and only identifiable through the careful analysis of discourses, symbolism and ideology with regard to
the constitution and composition of the human and the social body.
3) Human beings and, by extension, social groups are made up of substances, be they material or
immaterial. The genealogy of these substances, the way they circulate among human beings and groups,
the way they are transmitted from one generation to the next or are destroyed, constitute important aspects
in the understanding of the system of descent and filiation in particular, and of the entire group’s
organisation and structure in general. These substances’ existence is most often limited to the domain of
language and speech, and only rarely and sporadically surfaces in the domain of actual practice.
Alliance and marriage
At the height of descent theory and the interest in descent systems as the constituents of social groups during the
first half of the 20th century, with Lévi-Strauss’ work (1947) a new and complementary investigation into the
complexities of human kinship emerged: alliance theory. According to this structuralist theory, society is not (or
not solely) made up of principles of belonging (descent and groups), but primarily of principles of exchange.
Lévi-Strauss claimed that three types of exchanges characterise the human social realm: exchange of words
(language), exchange of goods (the economic domain) and exchange of human beings (marriage). It is only
when these three principles of exchange are systematised and functional in a group of human beings that the
latter actually constitutes a society with its shared cultural codes. Alliance theorists, as the name indicates, and
with them Lévi-Strauss and many other anthropologists, concentrated their research efforts on the domain of the
exchange of human beings: marriage. And marriage becomes a system of exchange if it is associated with the
obligation of exogamy, that is, marrying someone from 'outside' your family or group. Brothers and sisters who
over generations marry each other will not constitute a society. To do so, Lévi-Strauss explains, we need an
incest prohibition which forces people to obtain their spouses from other families.
Before going further, it is necessary to explain the distinction between alliance and marriage. Dumont (1957),
another alliance theorist albeit in some respects in disagreement with Lévi-Strauss, has conceptualised the
difference in the most systematic way. He talks of alliance (or alliance of marriage) when he observes and
analyses the repetition of identical marriage types over generations or among co-generationals. Thus marriage is
the individual event that happens in a particular place with particular people in a particular context, bringing two
people (and families) together with the aim of joining them as spouses and usually future parents. Alliance is the
system which reflects a certain regularity in the choice of suitable spouses and describes repetitions of identical
marriage types.
Alliance theory distinguishes three of these basic types of marriages. The most basic is called direct exchange or
the elementary system. The second type is indirect exchange and the third type is called the complex system. In
the direct exchange system, marriages place people and groups in a symmetric relationship. Females of group A,
say for example a clan, marry males of group B and females of group B marry males of group A. Group A thus
exchanges women or men with group B in a direct and reciprocal way. This exchange system can be linked to
the terminological systems mentioned earlier in this chapter. Most often, direct exchange systems occur where
the terminology is of the Dravidian or Iroquois type. Let me detail the principles, asking the reader to go back to
figure 1 if necessary, and combine terminology, descent system and alliance theory in one fictitious example.
Let us say that the descent system is patrilineal and that we have two clans A and B. Clan A is composed of my
father, my father’s brother, my father’s sister and other people related through the male line. Clan B is composed
of my mother, my mother’s brother, my mother’s sister etc. My father, who is from clan A, married my mother
from clan B (exogamy). His children thus belong to clan A. In exchange, my mother’s brother who is from clan
B can marry my father’s sister who is from clan A. Their children belong to clan B. Since I can only marry
people from clan B (exogamy), I call these children cross-cousins or wife, and not sibling. My children will be of
clan A and will marry people from clan B, and so on. What results from direct exchange systems is that a person
marries someone he or she calls cross-cousin, and the spouse’s sibling is also the sister’s or brother’s spouse. In
practice, as we will see, people only rarely marry their actual cross-cousin but do nevertheless marry a person of
the same category.
The second type is the indirect exchange system, which is found in, but is not exclusive to, Crow and Omaha
terminologies. Marriage in these cases is either patrilateral or matrilateral, that is, a person can marry a crosscousin from either the father’s side or the mother’s side respectively, but not from both. In terms of clans or
descent groups, it means that there are at least three exchanging units: clan A marries into clan B, who marries
into clan C who marries back into clan A. The exchange is no longer direct but indirect.
The last and least systemic exchange system is called the complex system. Marriage is here no longer a system of
exchange on its own, but merges into other types of exchanges, social structures and ideologies. An example of a
complex system is the modern European system where alliances (repetitions of identical marriages) are very
rare, since children of the same family may marry in different ways into the most diverse family backgrounds.
Statistically, of course, there are some regularities even among complex systems, but, as already mentioned, they
are relevant for social factors other than rules of marriage alone. For example, people of a certain social class
tend to marry into the same social class, and people in rural areas tend to marry following strategies that retain
the coherence of land ownership over time. Complex marriage systems are usually associated with limited, not
extensive, terminologies, in which kinship terms are only applied to close or very close kin.
The theories of descent and alliance do not need to be understood as exclusive paradigms but are in fact
complementary aspects of similar social and cultural characteristics and practices. Marriage and marriage rules
are needed to create more or less stable structures, of which clans and lineages are examples; and clans and
lineages are needed if marriage is to be exogamous and link people of different ascent. Descent differentiates and
distinguishes people as groups within a society, while marriage upholds the connection between these groups.
Data in this respect needs to take into account two distinct explanatory sources: firstly actual marriage practices
and the choice of partners, and secondly discourses about marriage rules. In some cases, practices and discourses
may overlap (people actually doing what they say they are supposed to do). In other cases, discourses rather
reflect an ideal type of practice which does not happen very often, if at all. Let us look briefly at the main
constituents of discourses about marriage rules.
Two types of rules can be expressed in discourses about marriage rules. The first type defines prescriptive
practices, the second describes proscriptive marriages. Prescriptive rules are rules that express what one is
ordered or supposed to do. They can be characterised as being jural (Leach 1965) or structural (Needham 1973).
In a Dravidian terminology with exogamous lineages or clans, the prescription would be to marry a cross-cousin,
as we have seen. From Leach’s point of view, it is this obligation which creates the clan structure. For Needham,
on the other hand, it is the structure of the terminology and of the clan system which, in order to be viable,
imposes the prescriptive rule. While I have greatly simplified Leach’s and Needham’s points of view here, we
may nevertheless conclude that this polemic is largely a chicken and egg question. In fact, to be operational, a
rule needs some collective acceptance (jural) in order to have and to be of structural significance. Obviously,
prescriptive rules are not tied merely to terminology and kinship. Consider for example India where one of the
prescriptive rules is to marry someone of the same caste. In contrast with proscriptive marriage rules,
prescriptive rules point to a class of particular people who are acceptable for marriage. Spouses are prescribed,
predefined and predetermined by their structural position in the system. In addition to prescriptive rules, and
particularly in complex systems, proscriptive rules have an important function.
A proscriptive rule defines who cannot be a spouse; it formulates an interdiction. It proceeds by layering these
interdictions so as to crystallise what class of people are ideal or acceptable partners. The most elementary
proscriptive rule is that of incest prohibition: siblings, parents and children are in the great majority of cases
proscribed as spouses, even though some exceptions of close kin endogamy seem to have existed, such as among
European royal families, or even brother-sister marriages among Egyptian Pharaohs. The basic incest prohibition
rule is frequently extended to other classes of people. We have seen that, in Dravidian or Iroquois systems,
parallel cousins (mother’s sister’s son, for example) are called by the terms denoting one’s siblings. They are
hence classified in the same category as oneself and are thus considered to be consanguines and not affines. The
fact that it is the actual local words for 'brother' and 'sister' that may be applied to them indeed recalls a process
of extending the incest prohibition rule to people other than actual and closely related kin.
Proscriptive marriage rules may also affect criteria other than those of class membership or terminological
distinctions. The obligation of exogamy can in fact be applied or interpreted in different ways. It can be
genealogical (prohibition to marry close kin whatever their kin category), terminological (prohibition to marry
people whom one calls by certain terms), spatial (prohibition to marry people who live in the same village, for
example) or social (prohibition to marry people from certain families, religions, roles etc.)
In addition to the recording of discourses about marriage and marriage rules, the second source of information
lies in marriage practices themselves: who marries whom, in what context and for what obvious and less obvious
reasons? Who organises the marriage and decides on the suitability of marriage partners? Marriage practice is a
far more complex matter to study than are discourses about marriage rules, because it often diverges from
discourses for complex and often hidden or obscure reasons. Let me take an example from the Ngaatjatjarra and
Ngaanyatjarra people of the Australian Western Desert to illustrate what is meant here.
While their prescriptive marriage rule is a cross-cousin one there are many proscriptive rules involved as well:
spatial exogamy (do not marry someone with whom you live or have lived) and genealogical exogamy (do not
marry someone who is genealogically close even if the person is a cross-cousin) are at work. Ideally, the
combination of the prescriptive and proscriptive rule could be formulated as follows: people marry a crosscousin who is at least of the third degree (for example a MMMBDDD) and who is geographically distant.
Ngaatjatjarra people also stress the necessity of exchange. It is, in principle at least, an elementary system where
a man marries a woman whose brother is also the husband of that man’s sister.
Observation and genealogies show, however, that marriages are very rarely an actual exchange of people and
that the system cannot be considered to be an elementary one. Each man has several potential partners and ways
to find a wife, each of them having particular terms and processes associated with it. First of all, during
initiation, the initiator will promise a man his daughter whom Ego will call pikarta. This is, according to
discourse, the ideal spouse. Pikarta is also ideally the sister of the man’s sister’s husband. In fact, while the man
will have a relationship with pikarta and her family which resembles that following actual marriage, including
the obligations of sharing and hosting etc., he will only very rarely marry this woman. He will in fact be
promised a second wife, this time by a potential mother-in-law, just after initiation. This potential wife is called
pampurlpa’s daughter. But, here again, even though he should marry and engage in an exchange and provide
that family with his sister, this will happen only very rarely. Another way of finding a wife is the process called
karlkurnu. The man provides his potential parents-in-law with presents until they agree to give him their
daughter. Many marriages are of this type. The last type, very frequent as well, is called warngirnu and is
elopement. The young couple simply runs away, not waiting for the parents’ approval, and returns to the
community once they have a child. 95% of couples are constituted through karlkurnu or warngirnu, that is,
processes that do not involve the formal exchange of people. One may argue that this shows a weak coincidence
between discourse and practice, something that is indeed quite frequent in anthropological studies. In the present
case, however, the problem is slightly more complex. It must be remembered that pikarta and pampurlpa’s
daughter involve obligations and solidarity between people as if the marriage had actually occurred. Thus, there
is no need to actually marry these women since the benefits of alliances are already provided simply through the
promise. In marrying someone other than the promised and prescribed partners, the man diversifies his network
of relatedness, socially and spatially speaking, and hence secures his position in the network of social and
economic obligations and exchange.
What do we need to remember from this again all too brief overview of marriage and alliance? Here are a few
guidelines for recording these elements.
1) Marriages are one of the major ways of maintaining relatedness between families and groups of
families. They are regulated by social organisation and social strategies in addition to personal affinities.
They are an institutionalised way of creating enduring relationships and sometimes corporations. How
these particular relationships are enacted in a group or society may in some cases be obscure, in some
obvious.
2) Marriage needs to be distinguished from sexual relations. While both are usually structured by some
incest prohibitions (which need to be described and documented), they do not respond to the same social
impetus. Sexual relations are temporary practices that have no influence on social organisation.
Marriages, particularly alliances of marriage, on the other hand, create and maintain social corporations.
3) Relationships through marriage — affinal relationships — are not limited to actual marriage. All facets
of the various procedures of relatedness creation need to be investigated. These facets may be economic,
political, spatial, religious etc. In most cases they involve particular vocabularies and speech etiquettes.
Structure and substance: some concluding remarks
Let us now come back to the example quoted at the beginning of this chapter in order to formulate a few
concluding remarks. Kungkankatja, minalinkatja, literally 'from a woman, from a man', meant, in the context of
the question asked, that the children of a woman and those of her brother are to be considered identical. Let us
also recall that this happened in a context in which the researcher expected a Dravidian-like terminology,
because he had recorded direct exchange type discourses about the marriage system and because he had
constructed terminologies through the genealogical method. Structurally, children from a brother and his sister
are cross-cousins, not brothers and sisters. They are what anthropologists call affines (potential or real in-laws),
not consanguines. But the definition of consanguinity is cultural. We have seen that there are some universal
rules of incest prohibition that denote what kind of people are everywhere (more or less so) considered too close
to have sexual relationships or to marry–parents, siblings and children are among them. However, humans
expand the biological idiom of this basic kinship nucleus to include other relatives: aunts, uncles, and their
children etc., depending on local rules and norms. Who in this lot is a consanguine, and cannot be married, or
not, is a question of local definition according to a local semantic system.
A brother and a sister are, in the example quoted above, locally thought to give birth to children that are
identical, that are thus themselves brothers and sisters, and not cross-cousins. Identical because they are thought
to share too many substances. They may have eaten at the same place and of the same food, they may have
played together as children and have an extensive shared memory, they were looked after and raised by the same
people, they lived at the same places, in the same region, they sat around the same fires. What they share is not
so much blood itself, as the term 'consanguine' suggests, but other material and immaterial substances: memory,
bodily substances, experiences. Pitt Rivers (1973) therefore proposed to talk of consubstantiality rather than of
consanguinity. Everywhere people believe they share things, their body, their spirit or whatever with other
people. The distinction between those with whom one shares something and those with whom one does not is
significant and needs to be described. The expressions and explanations that are given for this consubstantiality
are crucial in the understanding of social organisation, local ideologies and religious beliefs, of the social body in
general.
The study of kinship is a study of language and of a language as it reflects the deep representations that lie
beneath a local system of human and social reproduction. This language is made up of rules and norms, of a
grammar, made up of rules of descent that define and determine membership and rules of marriage that define
exchanges and the network between groups. This language also has a vocabulary made up of kinship terms that
are themselves systemic and of complex nomenclatures of social organisation. This language is applied, but
often contextually adapted: economic, political or religious factors play important roles. Bodily substances,
experiences and prerogatives are spelled out in the realm of kinship in ways which far from appearing rules seem
rather an integrated body of social practices and beliefs. It is the researcher’s task to identify its elementary
constituents and to understand their interaction and interrelation.
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